I couldn’t have been happier to see the end of the Year of the Rat and the beginning of the Year of the Ox. Especially when the Rat got into the helicopter and left Washington! So Welcome Bull/Ox/Biffalo/Bufallo/Bison.
The whole world seems to have gotten into the spirit. Wells Fargo in Half Moon Bay thoughtfully left red envelopes out on the counter, and the sun is out flooding the house with that strange slanty winter light.
The New Year’s energy must have infected me unconsciously – I spent the weekend cleaning the house. Really cleaning: I made Young pull out the washer and dryer so I could clean under them. I made Matthew scrub his carpet. I went to the florist and dropped a bunch of money on flowers that I arranged on the porch in the big copper vessel Tammy gave me, and all over the house.
My excuse was that the appraiser was coming to appraise the house again, for the same refinancing, but this time as a multifamily dwelling. Evidently the overwrought and banking-crisis-traumatized loan reviewers saw that Young’s studio over the garage is legally an apartment, though we’ve never rented it out.
Even the appraiser, the same courtly gentleman who did the first appraisal, thought it was insanity, since the house is zoned R-1, residential, but as he said – they are the customers. This tweaked me a bit, as I thought of myself as the customer, but he had a point. I was getting a bit overwrought and banking-crisis-traumatized myself.
And then I thought about all the people who are enmeshed in this insanity with their lives on the line, as Zorba said, “the full catastrophe,” and felt ashamed. And no appraiser was going to look behind the washer or even up in Matt’s loft, anyway.
The impetus for the refi (beside the fact that the rate is approximately 50% of that on our first home mortgage in 1978 Olympia) was the remodel we impulsively started by pulling down the wall between the kitchen and living room back in September.
Besides, its cold, and I really want to put a gas heating stove. Last month we ran the electric heat full blast, partly because we visitors, and the bill was astronomical.
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